Anonymity on the Internet…Is it Your Anonymity or the Audience’s that Brings Out the Fuckwad?

I’ve spent a lot of time on the internet. I mean a lot. If I were to write my autobiography, it would be called “Growing up on the Internet” and it would be a documentary for internet-virgin parents trying to understand what their connected 24/7 teenagers are experiencing.

So yeah, I’ve witnessed a lot of “fuckwads”. Ordinary people who, when getting online and finding an audience, lose all their social skills (/euphemism).

But while it struck a chord, I’ve always felt that something wasn’t quite right. I thought and thought and thought about it. After some discussion in the comment section of a past post of mine (which I would link to if I had the motivation to scan through all my posts until I find it, but I don’t), it dawned on me: the Audience is anonymous too.

Now, I’m not refuting any theories here. Especially not the one written by the guy who actually did research and who uses much fancier words than me. I’ve got no data more scientific than my own observations. All I’m bringing here is a dimension that seems to have been left out from (or at least, not highlighted enough in) the theories and their subsequent discussions.

Lord of the Flies

The Fuckwad Theory and Online Disinhibition Effect both suggest a very Lord of the Flies view of the Internet Nation.

“No, no“, you say, “the theories specify Normal Person.”

Normal person. Thing is, to me, if you don’t care about the effects your actions have on others, then you don’t care about the effects your actions have on others. It doesn’t matter if others know who you are, or if you’ll be punished. You won’t act if you can be punished, but what’s holding you back is the effect your actions have on you, not the effect they have on others.

And thus, the “normal person” in the theory is actually always an asshole and the lack of sanctions on the internet simply removes the chains.

I know I probably have too much of an idealistic view of the world, but it seems that the Lord of the Flies theory takes it too far. Yeah, there are a lot of horrible people in the world (What are the statistics for sexual assault again? It makes me nauseous just to think about how many animals who parade as humans are among us.), but is every douchebag on the internet a sociopathic monster?

What if some of these rotten apples of the internet are capable of empathy, but don’t sense the effect of their behaviours because they can’t grasp the reality of the audience?

If you can’t see it, it doesn’t exist.

The feedback given by an internet audience is always a reaction. Sometimes a good reaction, sometimes a bad reaction. But an ethereal crowd expressing offense and hurt doesn’t transmit the same poignant message as the human face on the human being in front of you.

Taking into consideration the anonymity of the audience thus encompasses “normal person” to not only total empathy lacking sociopaths, but also more average individuals who simply don’t anticipate the effects of their actions when there’s no clear feedback.

You’re Not Anonymous on the Internet, but Everyone Else Is

Sometimes you’re a little anonymous. When you first join a group or community, you can pick whatever name you want and make up whatever story you want about yourself.

Sometimes you feel a little anonymous. I’m just as shy on the internet as I am in real life, but I’ve been told by real-life bashful friends that they’re more outgoing on the internet because no one knows who they are.

But if you’re around the same group long enough, you’ll build an identity for yourself. While this identity might be real or fake, you still have it. The local assholes are known as the local assholes.

You can build a fake identity for yourself in real life too. I could join, say, a yoga group in the city, and pretend to be, um, a musician from, I dunno, Hawaii. The internet allows wackier identities, but it isn’t all that more anonymous than in real life.

The people around you though, you don’t know who they are. Pretty much all of Suler’s factor’s come into play. “Invisibility“, because it’s easy to assume that everyone around you is lying about who they are, or “Solipsistic Introjection” because you can make assumptions about then using your imagination, “Minimizing Authority” because social ranks are attributed differently on the internet.

And thus, I find that the anonymity of the audience is just as important (if not more) than the anonymity of the person when it comes to explaining bizarre internet behaviors.

Facebook

There’s an old episode of the Instance where Randy points out that the meanest behaviour he’d witnessed actually took place on Facebook. Facebook. The place on the internet where you’re given the least privacy.

So I went and checked it out for myself. Followed a few fan pages, read some discussions. Yep, a lot of trolls. You’d think the trolls would be the ones with pseudonyms and cartoon pictures, but no. Everything seems genuine. Interestingly, the meanest people I encountered on Facebook (though that might just have to do with the type of pages I was looking at) were middle aged women. I could click on their profiles, see where they work, look at pictures of their kids and check their friends lists. Not so anonymous. However, they have no clue who’s reading their messages and being creepy. Generally, their hate was directed at celebrities. Celebrities who probably never read their fan pages. Celebrities whom we don’t know personally. Celebrities who are too busy making money and being flattered in award ceremonies to be touched by what idiots on the internet are writing. In other words, celebrities who are kind of anonymous.

Again, it’s all about the anonymity of the audience.

One on One VS One on Many

In my early internet days, one of the phenomenons I found most remarkable was that our resident message board douchebags were usually super nice when you talked to them privately.

Penny Arcade’s theory highlights the need for there to be an audience present for the fuckwad to be released and, clearly, the audience of a whole forum is far more exciting than the audience of a single person. But I think it goes beyond that. The single person audience is far less anonymous than the mass of 1000 message board posters. When talking to me, our trolls were speaking to someone they perceived as a real person, with real feelings and a real life. When talking in front of the forum, they weren’t addressing anyone in particular, just throwing out whatever words would give them the most amusing reaction from the ethereal masses.

Kind of like actors, comedians and singers who are real goofballs on stage (where the audience is vague, nondescript) but admit to actually being quite shy when not in the spotlight, I think a lot of net nerds use the anonymous audience to enjoy attention they normally couldn’t handle. Except that, unlike talent artists, most internet trolls aren’t very entertaining and don’t have the social skills to realize it (or, at least, care).

Conclusion: Don’t Underestimate the Anonymity of the Audience

I don’t discredit personal anonymity on the internet, however I find that in discussions about inappropriate or bizarre internet behaviour, the role of the anonymous audience is neglected. Yet, if those trying to make the internet a better place want to succeed, taking away the anonymity of the audience is what will make a difference.

This why sensitization discussions do have some effect. Take attacks on the unemployed, for example. I once witnessed a thread of complaints and mockery of unemployed gamers. Someone started another thread, explaining that she was an unemployed gamer who, yes, lived with her parents. She hadn’t always been in the situation and she was making concrete actions toward getting herself out the situation.

By making that post, she took away the anonymity of the audience. The sociopaths still laughed. I won’t deny that punishment-free environments allow those who live a Lord-of-the-Flies life to harm others on a whim. But those in the middle, who were cruel because they didn’t anticipate that their words would touch real people, once they decided that she was being sincere (note that it’s very easy to assume that someone is lying or exaggerating on the internet) they moved on to being idiots about something else.

10 Comments on “Anonymity on the Internet…Is it Your Anonymity or the Audience’s that Brings Out the Fuckwad?”

Great write up. Over the last year I’ve tried to be less anonymous and get more involved with the Internet community. I’ve been lucky enough to chat with some great people. Like your post says, people hide behind the cover of the Internet so that they can be nasty and cruel. My family has also been attacked over Facebook and the sad thing was that it was family :( Perhaps I just have good morals, but I treat every person I come across over Twitter, Facebook , or Flickr with the same respect and dignity I would expect for myself. It is a small world and Karma is all around us.

Facebook just seems bring out the childishness in people! It’s impressive how asinine a lot of behaviour is on Facebook. I’m kind of tempted to side with the Lord of the Flies thing when things get personal on Facebook. Those who turn into big babies on Facebook, are big babies in real life too, just cowardly big babies.

I don’t think I act much different on the internet than in real life either. I suppose that those of us who are happy with who we are and proud of our identities have nothing to gain in behaving bizarrely online.

That is exactly the case of the family members who acted out of line on Fb. As miserable as their comments were on Fb, IRL they’re just as unhappy. It’s sad how some people just can’t focus on making their own lives better, and instead waste alot of energy on trying to cause drama. Lately been seeing alot of it in game/Internet.

Ironically (or not), Penny Arcade is just as guilty of promoting anonymous fuckwads given their role in being rape apologists and encouraging their fans to troll and harass rape survivors during the Dickwolves fiasco.

Eh, I don’t think Penny Arcade is an anti-fuckwad crusade. The Fuckwad Theory is just an observation they made, about how a lot of individuals behave differently on the internet than they would in real life. And this post is also an observation on internet behavior, not a debate on specific ethics (granted, I wrote very judgmentally and mostly spoke of cruelty. Online disinhibition applies to embarrassing behaviour as well, like posting nude pictures of oneself).

The idea that it’s the anonymity of the audience, not necessarily the troll, that matters never occurred to me until this post, but it totally makes sense. We all know that it’s easier to be cruel to a bunch of faceless strangers (like in movies where the evil henchmen have masks or helmets, so you don’t feel bad when the heros kill them).

Maybe instead of telling shy people to imagine their audience is wearing only underwear, we should tell them to imagine their audience is completely anonymous (and possibly wearing masks). Or maybe that’s dangerous and will only create more internet fuckwads.

But for every 10 fuckwads, we might discover one person who is awesome without their inhibitions!

I didn’t think about movies, but that’s a fantastic example you bring up. When movie makers want the viewers to be detached from bad guy/victims/person about to die, those characters are portrayed very vaguely. When they want the viewers to be engaged and moved by a death/murder/bad thing, they give us close up shots and character histories.

I never thought about the idea of the audience being anonymous being the reason trolls get off so much on what they do, but it does make sense. It really IS easier to be mean to a stranger than a friend, after all, so, yeah. Hm.

Thanks! It’s my desperate attempt to convince myself that every bad/annoying/really not funny person on the internet isn’t really a sociopath!

I don’t think anonymity, be it of the person or the audience, is ever an excuse, but I do believe that by understanding online social behaviours better, we can give everyone (especially younger people who are more vulnerable to online risks) a better internet experience.

[…] Just remember before you comment that I’m a real person, with real feelings and just because y…. Like this:LikeBe the first to like this post. Leave a Comment by Lynesta on April 11, 2012 • Permalink Posted in Feminism Tagged Feminism, Gamers, games, Maxim, Stereotypes, trading cards, Women, World of Warcraft, wowtcg […]